Don and some others have given their views, now I'll give mine and let the party begin!!

For a magazine, any magazine, to ask for $7 American, they better be delivering the goods. For the most part, Motorsport does that. It brings back the bygone eras and does a good job of it. The old track series is really a tough old bird to do justice.
Without the cars and drivers, the Ring is just another winding road and no amount of excellent photography can make up for that.
The writing is also done well, and really, how many times can you tell the same story and make it sound fresh?
For me, after reading each issue, I'm always left a little hungry for more. I want a new spin on the old tale. I think we all do.

Motor Sport used to be written by enthusiasts who happend to be able to write (extremely well) Now it's part of a large publishing house and is written by professional journalists. It's also aimed at a much wider audience and probably the subject of audience research which would have brought horror to Jenks and Boddy. It's still good in parts but it will never be the magazine it once was. I don't don't think anything could be.

I am seriously considering not renewing my subscription to MotorSport when it runs out this Fall. If I do renew, it may well be the last.

It has the odd article or so that is worthwhile, but overall I find it strangely lacking in substance. It seems as if it is the historical articles that F1 Racing wouldn't run and crammed into another slick format.

The Tripoli article was about the last straw for me. Over the past year or two I have found it more and more shallow and more and more lacking in depth of its research. When I never even got the courtesy of a "bugger off" from the editor or Mr. Mark Hughes, I was highly displeased.

As was mentioned, perhaps MotorSport is beyond the pale already. Outside DD's site, this Forum, 8W, and a few other sites, the interest in motor racing history seems poorly served by rags like MotorSport who can't even get beyond the elementary school level of research.

The demise of the short-lived Historic Race & Rally of some years ago is typical of the way of the world: glossy, shallow, "professional" rags win over those run by real enthusiasts every time since that is what the market research says....

I would truly like to see an article that tells what really went on at Tripoli in 1933 put in to show that this racing history stuff is more interesting than it seems. And then some of the other pieces of racing being shortchanged should be covered. Bill Boddy needs Karl, DD, Barry & Ray to come in and put their stamp on a few issues. Lordy, it would be a big improvement over what is going on now.

I'm with you Don. Reading the cover, the articles SOUND like they are going to be great (Lotus 49 & Eagle, for example), but I always come away wanting more than I got. Motorsport seems oriented to the occasional vintage fan, not the motor racing historian. Nice pictues, nice ideas...shallow execution.

Don,
On Track?????
I ditched that rag years ago!!!!
You talk about a mag with no focus, On Track couldn't hit a target "point blank" using a laser sight.
F1 magazine is too used to the "flavor of the month" syndrome. Has anyone counted how many Jacques Villeneuve articles have appeared this past year? Wasn't each one after the first, a bit redundant??
As for Motorsport, yes, it is trying to reach a wider audience. And yes, a magazine can't survive being written by enthusiasts only. If your feature article is about the Grand Prix of Tripoli and not enough people give a damn to pick up a copy, it really doesn't matter how good the article was researched, because the bottom line wasn't met. It's called making a profit.
I have tons of motoring magazines down my basement and all of them at one time or another were great. And one by one, they all fell victim to the bottom line. It's a shame, but it's reality.
Jenks spent his life in a generator powered shack, maybe because Motorsport never bothered to pay him. Would he be well paid today?? Would he write as well?? Would he care?? Maybe he could work for David E. Davis!! You remember him, the single most reliable provider of kindling!!!!
But back to the point, Motorsport isn't perfect, but it's better than anything else out there providing the subject matter.
Could it be a better mag?? Yes!!
Will it?? That's more in the hands of the readers and the accountants.
So, Don, keep reading and most of all, keep writing to the editor. He's not the enemy.
It's reality. And reality can be a BITCH!!!!

Nomad,
Sorry, love, but I can't think of you as a guy!!! It would spoil my overactive, fantasy
vision of you. But you are one of the gang and your views are always welcome.
So, tell me, what happened at UNI????

As long as you don't tell what happened in Astor Terrace....
Now, about Motor Sport, I've said my bit about the circuit stories. I would kill myself writing about the circuits they cover because I have to research to such a degree - but I will say that - without equivocation - I would do a much more complete job and it would have guts.
I don't think the bottom line is all that important with this magazine. The bottom line has got to be good with all those ads in the thing! Their real problem will be in perceiving WHEN the readership STARTS to drop away, and then they'll have to come to this forum and find out why.
As for Jenks being paid, I think he was probably fairly handsomely rewarded - in keeping with the remuneration of the times. I think he knew his responsibilities, and he knew how to spend the balance. Maybe he was a hermit, but he ate green snails in Monte Carlo, drove Porsches and Jag E-types, travelled the Continent incessantly and lived a very full life. He managed, apparently, to save enough to buy a razor for that infamous 1970 shave, too.
For a certainty, he would have earned more today, but that's the way of the modern world - wait until the good ones are gone and pay heaps to the Andrew Frankels of this world.
I would recommend Motor Racing Australia to you, but it lacks the base content you want. But for balance, old and new, cars and people, history and future, it's a great Australian magazine. Barry writes some good regular features and other articles, I put in some stuff, Graham Howard turns out impeccable material and a whole bunch of others make it very readable.
The problem is, there is nowhere now you can pick up the latest Continental Notes, or those incisive Reflections at the end of DSJ's race reports. The world has been devalued that much.

Ray,
Yes, as a matter of fact, a letter I wrote was published. Surprising, because the letter was more for the likes of F1!!!

More to the point of this thread, I do long for the old Motorsport. It was a gold mine packed in a very plain brown paper bag. I doubt that anyone today, who didn't already know of the magazine, would even pick it
from the shelf. Back in the 50's and 60's and even the 70's , you could get away with that certain "lack of gloss', but, today things are different. Look at Peter Egan at R&T, probably one of the better automotive writers out there, and to make a living, he also writes for a motorcycle mag. Maybe he's
also a night watchman!!! Welcome to the new age of motoring journalism.
So, keep writing those letters to the editor.
I, for one, know they do read them!!!!

Motorsport used to be my favourite magazine in the late 60s and early 70s. I'll never forget Jenk's report on the 1968 Belgian GP (I think) which was done like a commentary. I do buy it on occasion these days, but prefer to spend my money on a decent book really.

If we're remembering individual Jenks things, and apart from the one I had Eric dig out a month or two back and the 1968 French (a real classic), what about the 'Grosser Preis von Deutschland' the year Jenks felt that the official race had to be called something like the 'Kleine Preis von Deutschland'?
If anyone recalls, he made up this race where starting money was back in vogue, the Nurburgring resounded to the sounds of dozens of GP cars and was filled with multitudes of spectators.
I recall that Moseley sent six or seven cars built up out of spares from round the March factory to get more starting money, Vittorio Brambilla went missing - they found his car down the deepest gorge at the side of the circuit with a note pinned to the steering wheel - 'I knew you could never retrieve it from here, so I've gone home' (that was the punchline to the whole story) and other typical things. He even named those who would stay away along with their excuses, and described what reasons the ones who turned up used to overcome what was supposed to be a closed shop...
Jenks at his post-Mille Miglia best!
The names for his 'reflections' columns were often enough!

Ray,
Maybe you've hit on something here, perhaps there could be a place somewhere for a ghost call or fantasy call of various Grands Prix? Sheer flights of fantasy, complete fiction but based on fact, inuendo and anecdote. I'm sure a good laugh could be had, and for those of us who like writing, it could help us to indulge in writing styles to, florid? risque? satirical? than our usual outlets.

Developing this theme even further there could be ghost championships in eras of several Grands Prix, for example no doubt a popular era would be the Ghost Late 60's championship, plus also a late70s early 80s, late 80's, early 50's etc......

Does anybody know the circumstances under which Jenkinson left Motor Sport? I remember a remark by him that "this would be my last column, but this is not of my choice" (Not his precise words). In the next edition motor Sport published a profile of Jabby Crombac "the doyen of Motor Racing writers" which seemed to be rubbing salt nto wounds.

One of many happy coincidences in my life was that the very first issue of Motor Sport I ever saw was that dated June 1955.
I was too shy to ask the newsagent to hold it for me, so I carefully hid it behind other magazines each morning, then walked to and from school each day (Central Railway Station to near the Sydney Showground) to save my bus fares. Three pence each way times five days was 2/6 - exactly the price of the magazine.
It contained Jenks' famous Mille Miglia story and the 1955 Monaco GP with fabulous photos.
By the time I got to Monaco, almost 30 years later, it wasn't the same place I'd always wanted to see, although very exciting just the same.
About 30 years after buying that magazine I had come to know Jenks and Stirling Moss as friends (the former originally via many letters, the latter originally from a Jaguar release in Sydney). Mike Kable took a photo of me sitting with them, having lunch, at the Belgian GP in the mid-1980s. I often look at it and marvel at how dreams sometimes can come true.
In 1977, after I had been writing Tasman and Australian Rally Championship reports for Motor Sport's sister publication Motoring News for a number of years, I went to their offices in Bonhill Street London.
I met all the people I had been dealing with, and asked (in fact had written in advance to arrange it) to meet William Boddy.
They said, "Wouldn't you rather meet God? It would be easier to arrange."
I did get in to see him, but only for a few minutes, and he thought I was someone from America who also had written asking to meet him. He really was, and is, in a world of his own.
I bought Motor Sport religeously every month for about 40 years before finally abandoning it.
These days, the great photos occasionally tempt me to buy it, but I only occasionally succumb. I agree that the stories aren't as well researched as people like those on this forum would wish to read.
On the positive side, perhaps it converts many new people to exploring the history of motor sport.

I have done a lot of research on the 1933 Tripoli GP and had intended one day to write a story about it.
I suspect none of the retrospective stories I have read have been completely accurate; some are decidedly from fantasy land - especially the one attributed to Alfred Neubauer in his "auto" biography.
The vast differences in reports of who did what during the race is extremely frustrating.
Unfortunately, I think one would need a lap chart and lap times to really sort out the race itself, and I doubt that these exist.
The interesting thing, I find, is the psychology behind it all: What the drivers and the ticket holders were thinking and what they were trying to achieve.
The only thing I honestly believe is that the true story (which might never be known) is very different from most of what has been written.

As I've mentioned before, the hardest thing I have to come to grips with is that the writer didn't access the magazine's own report on the event!
Nice to see you awake again, Barry... how do we organise this takeover? Can Gabe help?

For me 'Motorsport' magazine is still a good read from cover to cover - and I include the classified adverts that list unusual or historic racing cars in this assessment.

It is definately not as good as it used to be (except for the late 80s and early 90s when it really lost the plot).God help 'Motorsport' when Boddy departs. He is their consistent link between fact and experience and the pursuit of todays gossip lead magazine sales.

Ray hits the nail on the head when he asks why they simply did not refer to their archived material on Tripoli. Would it really have lead to reduced sales by relying on the facts or was there another reason why(laziness,etc)? Me thinks that the second applies.

The recent Tripoli article is a case in point whereby it is getting harder to seperate fact from fiction as the years go on. If you are serious about history you need to be carefull who you listen too these days. It will not get any easier!

On the subject of the 'Top 100' drivers article in 'Motorsport' recently, surely one of the intentions of such an article is to create 'lively' discussion on the ratings and merits of each driver? While I did not agree on a lot of the drivers rating it does not necessarily mean that 'Motorsport' were wrong, rather that almost everyone will have differing views on where and how drivers rate against each other. If we did not we would be a rather boring bunch. Wouldnt we??

Keir,
Peter Egan also writes for an aviation magazine. I believ he also "services" little old ladies in his spare time. Busy boy he be.
Was it his story that had the picture of the body work that "he did himself"?
------------------
"Pete, Do you sometimes get tired? Of the driving? Lately I have been getting tired. Very tired."

ZippyD,
Peter Egan did do a great deal of his own body work, but I don't think he was part of that particular article.
I believe it was a take-off on "Rob's Garage", the Rob Walker retro,
called "Bob's Garage". I still have that photo of me and the 128 on display. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

Can't you pick up a Renault R4? Especially the panel van... anything to avoid that Italian ferric oxide!
When you consider those little bits that used to be so readable under the heading, "Pity the Poor Historian".... it makes you nearly weep to think that the very author of this regular comment about erroneous journalism is now a part of it!

Ray,
I'm not that familiar with the French metal. Although Keir had Renault 18i which was pretty good. I prefer the Italian types.
BTW I never had an ounce of rust on my Fiats. Unless you count the spot where I stuffed the 128 into a wall after a night of heavy revelry with Keir at a gay bar in New York. Don't get the wrong idea. We went there for a party not the pick up possabilities.

------------------
"Pete, Do you sometimes get tired? Of the driving? Lately I have been getting tired. Very tired."

Here they're famous for it, Alfas used to be too, but I think time is changing that.
The R4 was the ugly duckling thing, and the panel van was used for everything possible in France. They had a little engine (around 1100cc), front wheel drive, different wheelbase right to left side and lots of body roll.
I don't see body roll as a bad thing myself, that's why I love 404s.

Gay Bar!!!!
I don't remember any gay bar!!!!
That was an interesting night. I'll never forget what it was like to be a very unwelcome minority!!! The piano player wouldn't even play any Springstein!!!
But back to rust, I believe my Honda had twice as much rust as both the Fiats(and
the Honda had very little)

My dad used to buy Motorsport every month. I went straight for the colour pictures in the middle. Once they stopped having the colour montage in the middle, it went down hill, and was never the same again. I could never understand why the writers didnt have names, but only ever read the GP and sportcar race reports anyway.So DSJ probably was great, but I didn't know any different. he was certainly pretty opinionated, and often missed out on detail about drivers or teams simply because I believe in retrospect, he didn't like them!
I believe the "New" Simon Taylor Motorsport was brilliant for about twenty issues, especially as i thought it was going to dissappear from the shelves forever (and deserved to).
Now i have cancelled my airfreighted edition, because the editor is now up himself, the stories are beginning to repeat, get more shallow, and become glorified photoshoots.As for WB, I never undersood the old coot, always thought he was up himself, and his current heading photo indicates that he probably is.
As for all that "Yours longingly, unfailingly and unquestionably bollucks at the end of each letter, what could be more pretentious. Sorry chaps, Motorsport (Est 1924) lost the plot again.

My dad used to buy Motorsport every month. I went straight for the colour pictures in the middle. Once they stopped having the colour montage in the middle, it went down hill, and was never the same again. I could never understand why the writers didnt have names, but only ever read the GP and sportcar race reports anyway.So DSJ probably was great, but I didn't know any different. he was certainly pretty opinionated, and often missed out on detail about drivers or teams simply because I believe in retrospect, he didn't like them!
I believe the "New" Simon Taylor Motorsport was brilliant for about twenty issues, especially as i thought it was going to dissappear from the shelves forever (and deserved to).
Now i have cancelled my airfreighted edition, because the editor is now up himself, the stories are beginning to repeat, get more shallow, and become glorified photoshoots.As for WB, I never undersood the old coot, always thought he was up himself, and his current heading photo indicates that he probably is.
As for all that "Yours longingly, unfailingly and unquestionably bollucks at the end of each letter, what could be more pretentious. Sorry chaps, Motorsport (Est 1924) lost the plot again.

There were occasions when Jenks would bag a driver at one meeting then praise him at the next. He may have gone to sleep in the rain, but driven brilliantly in the dry at the Nurburgring - and I previously mentioned the example of Amon at Rouen...
There was never any favouritism, and I feel you haven't read carefully if you thought he simply didn't like people. Sure, without the background knowledge it is hard to know why he never thought Rindt would win a race, and it did come through that he thought him stupid for being a chain smoker. But that was true, anyway...

Back in August I devoted a column in Rear View Mirror to the 1933 Tripoli race. It was this article that I sent to M*t*rSp*rt as a measure for the cr*p that was printed. I was amazed - to echo Ray - that it was evident that no attempt was made to utilize their own files!

I am expanding my article for Leif if he still wants it. I can send it your way if you wish.

//////////////

I still get On Track since I want something in print, but nothing else seems to quite be what I want. I have been with OT since Volume 1 Number 1 and feel some loyalty to them, however misguided it might be.

I am still pondering what to do when my renewal comes up, but I will probably wimp out and try 'one more year...'

Oh, never forget that DSJ truly marched to the tune of a Different Drummer. His hutch with the generator was his choice and his lifestyle was out of synch with most others in the racing community. However, he was a very literate soul and as Brave as Dick Tracy which was the minimum requirement for being a sidecar rider in those days. I am pretty brave and done some crazy things in my miltary career, but even I gasp at what it took to be a rider in the era DSJ did it. I met DSJ many times, but can't say I knew him. He was, however - along with Norman Smith, one of the reasons I got interested in chassis numbers; or, as Norman Smith put, 'Case History.'

Don
I would love to see your story on the Tripoli race.
I would be interested to see if your conclusions are similar to mine.
But if you didn't have a lot of reference material, you might have been misled.
A fairly recent (1994) book on the Tripoli GP by Valerio Moretti gives some added insight - but I still think there is even more to it than that.
And I don't believe the driver's attempted to alter the results any where near as dramatically as has been suggested by many.
I don't remember all the details right now, without going back and checking it all again. Your story will prompt my memory a bit, I am sure.

I wasn't subsribing to this forum when the January motor Sport thread was current but I have read it now, and also Moretti's account in his Nuvolari biography.
I still can't understand why the ticket holders needed to include the divers in the arrangemnt. THey reduced their takings by 50% and didn't increase their chances. Why didn't they just make a deal amongst themselves?

Don, some years ago, Motor sport published an article on the race by Bill Boddy. I remember it being much more sceptical than the common stories and probably much more in line with yours. Did you include it in your research? I tried to find it recently but an extensive search of my archive (actually a very big pile) failed to find it. I would like to read it again if anybody can tell me the approximate date.

Don
Good Tripoli story. It goes a long way towards de-bunking a lot of the other rubbish that has been published.
Mention of Tim Birkin reminded me that I read some time (in Motor Sport? Maybe not... Could it have been something like Court's Grand Prix Requiem?) a theory by modern-day doctors that his death was not directly related to the burns he received in Tripoli.
Apparently they studied the symptoms and put it down to some problem he must already have had.
Does anyone remember this?
Ah, what we wouldn't give for a highly detailed index of Motor Sport - and other mags.

The real problem, Barry, is that the likes of you and I didn't realise thirty five years ago that we'd have this problem as we advanced to a more mature age. Surely we would have done it along the way...

The problem is that the index would be gigantic. Take the Tripoli article for instance...if you really want to find whatever you could be looking for you'd have to index it on Tripoli, Nuvolari, Birkin, Caracciola and what not. Basically you would find about 30 to 50 index entries for each article. What's that per issue? 200? 300? For a year that's between 2000 and 4000, let alone 35 years which would be somewhere around 100000 entries at rough estimate.

But building such an index would be alogical extention of the research performed by a lot of you here. Refering to Don's posting with the complement, some Philately like study group could do the job. You could publish it on the Web. Possibilities are endless. It just takes a lot of time.

If you want to do a thing like you should build a database out of it. A good one. Again it can be done, but it takes time and someone to keep the work going.... Don't ask.

I am willing to put an index (by stories and key words) together on a CD but I am only familiar with FileMakerPro and MS Excel 2000.

During the Sixties, while living in South Africa, I saw MotorSport for the first time. I did not like it then very much, because there was too much writing and too few pictures. Now, I still don't like it very much, because they have too little writing and too many pictures.

This means, the magazine and I have both changed. But I really am interested in some of the older issues (50's to 80's) but without index I would not know which issues could be of interest to me.

So, who is sending me the old MotorSport issues for my proposed index?

Ray: Amongst the many 'Jenks' things to remember, a couple of favourites of mine are the 'unofficial' account of the 197? British GP, when it rained, all the cars fell off the track or into the catch fencing, leaving Fittpaldi as the winner and almost sole runner. The officials could not release the results on race day, as they were still trying to decide which ditch the 2nd, 3rd and other placings were in. This meant that Jenks could not meet the deadline for a report with official results. So he let himself loose with a hilarious, but true (I was there), account of a day at the circus (F1 style).

Sorry, I can't remember the year, and I'm not going to thumb through 50 years of copies just now. That index thing again!

Another favourite is Jenks reflections (March 1976) on abandoning the Nurburgring as the venue for the German GP.
If there was any love left between DSJ and Ecclestone et al, that article would have finished it.

I stopped taking MS when Jenks stopped contributing. Yes, there was a strange silence over the parting, but the DSJ column inches had been much diminished for the last 2 or 3 years. The days when he could find his own copy from drivers and mechanics were long gone.

My thoughts on the current MS are that the original reports are more informative, and much more interesting, than the retrospectives. And the pictures of those glossy restorations just don't seem to have the same presence as those of the originals.

Incidently, the 2000 editions of On Track are a decided improvement over former years.

No, I'm afraid I don't remember that seventies British GP non-report... nor the 76 reflections... I would just love to have all my collection back, and I would read an issue each day, savouring the Jenks of old and always learning more...

Barry,
Some time ago you made a crie de coeur for a Motorsport index. Well, one exists; I have a copy which I bought recently and it's the only copy I've ever seen or heard of. It appears to be produced by the old Roneo process (youngsters will need an explanation no doubt) and is titled "Motor Sport Indices 1947-83". It was produced in Harrogate, Yorkshire, England. Unfortunately it deals separately with each year and is not that detailed, but, hey, any index is better than no index. It's soft-bound with a spiral binding with legal sized pages.
Did you know there are articles about Napier racing cars on pages 227, 274, 453 and 626 of the 1951 issues? That's the kind of thing it contains. I find it worthwhile.

I've just come across this thread and I'd like to say a word in favour of Motor Sport.I accept the arguments regarding shallowness etc etc, but if it wasn't there, where would we go for this type of stuff?I would almost buy it just for the old circuit features alone. They may be lacking in substance or whatever, but what's the alternative?I believe the Scottish author Graham Gauld is working on an Historic Racing magazine, but I don't know if that will come to anything.Also, two guys named Reuben Archer and Gary Critcher attempted to get a similar thing off the ground recently, but failed. However, they went on to produce Retro Racing as a website, which I expect most of you all know about.If not, you'll find it at http://www.retroracing.co.ukSo I'll stick with Motor Sport, at least for the photographs and the old circuit features. (Where else will you find a picture like the one of the 1963 ATS that appears in the issue I received yesterday?)

Tony
Barry Boor's joining the group had confused me a little. I wasn't sure whether you were referring to him or to me. But I just looked back thorugh this thread and realised you were addressing me.
I actually have that index you are talking about. I paid a lot of money for it and was disappointed because it only - as far as I could tell - repeats the official Motor Sport indexes that they always have produced for their bound volumes.
Better than nothing, though. The time an index saves means it pays for itself very quickly.

When I made that comment I was thinking more of a REALLY detailed index, like the one I recently bought for Wheels magazine (Australian road test mag). Compiled by a magazine collector/real estate salesamn in Canberra, it is absolutely beyond criticism. It has 573 pages and has every driver, car, subject ever mentioned in any article. It is flawless in its presentation and hard-bound. Worth every cent of the $100 dollars or so I paid for it.
Something like that for Motor Sport would be senastional, but who would have the time to create it? And there are so many magazines. Autosport for instance. Wow! What a job that would be.

A related subject: I read in some book or other I bought some time in the last few years, the author thanked someone for putting EVERY issue of Chris Economaki's National Speedsport News onto microfische! You're talking 50-something years of newspapers - and isn't it weekly?
How valuable would that be to US historians as a research tool?

If I remember where I saw it, I will let you all know.

What a shame they had to use old technology, though. Imagine how much easier it would be to research if stored electronically as text and photos. You could quickly zero in on whatever you wanted.

I'll have to agree with Barry here. Being one of the youngsters, I find that Motorsport gives concise info that most of us young guys just simply don't know. Sure, its not as thorough as a good book on a specific subject, but the reasonable glimpse it gives into many various subjects makes it easy to get a good idea of what was going on, and what subjects one might like to look into further.

You guys have to admit that most of you are part of a pretty small hardcore group. (or am I wrong, are there lots of you guys out there?) I think it would be near impossible to just break-even publishing a historic magazine that would make you all happy. It seems to me that Motorsport is trying to appeal to both the new and old historic crowd. Nevertheless they probably realize that not only is the "new" crowd bigger, it is easier to please.